


The Lure of Family

by SouthernMoonshine



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Aphasia, Brothers, F/M, Family, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Screwy Family Trees
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-14
Updated: 2013-09-14
Packaged: 2017-12-26 14:21:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/966957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SouthernMoonshine/pseuds/SouthernMoonshine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He found Dirk, pale and frozen, in the back corner. Sunglasses on his face, stiff as a board against the wall. Dave drifted up to him, and recognized the posture. 'Get me out of here!'</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lure of Family

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Nonverbal](https://archiveofourown.org/works/614918) by [Mortior](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mortior/pseuds/Mortior). 



> I don't ask, Dave just shows up with these ideas, I sit down and write. I don't own Homestuck. I'm just borrowing them. I can't claim Aphasic Dirk, either, I ran across the idea on this site and it was enchanting. I was inspired to write something without the incest.

Dave met Dirk through John and Jane, though he'd vaguely known _of_ him from Bro, same way he knew _of_ Roxy and Rose. Though he really did know them, they were his nieces. Their family tree was crabbed and twisty that way. Bro wasn't the best source of information on relatives and such, even on his best days, but that was because he didn't trust _people_. Dave got that, though. He understood Bro, even if nobody else seemed to. And because of that, John thought he might understand Dirk, because nobody else did.

So John dragged him along to the therapy meeting, and while Jane and John served cupcakes, Dave browsed his way through the crowd.

He found Dirk, pale and frozen, in the back corner. Sunglasses on his face, stiff as a board against the wall. Dave drifted up to him, and recognized the posture. 'Get me out of here!' Dave looked at him, looked at the collected people, then crooked a beckoning finger at Dirk. The head turned, and after a swaying uncertain moment, Dirk unbent and followed Dave in the sleek stalking grace of a great cat. Dave headed down the hall, bypassed the quiet rooms, and opened a window. He crawled out, and found Dirk right behind him. They sat against the brick wall, in the shade, and after a moment Dave tried a gesture. He and Bro used American Sign Language and their own peculiar shorthand when Bro went aphasic in fits, and Jane said they'd been trying to teach Dirk ASL.

Dave did talk aloud as he signed, because he was intensely verbal. He'd always talked, chatted, rapped, rambled. So he talked and signed, and Dirk signed back in little fits and starts. 

For someone who wasn't supposed understand anyone and not talk back, Dirk was fairly chatty.

It was not a full conversation, not at all. It was bits and pieces, strained learning. He was _learning_ , though, and soaked up what Dave could teach him, vocabulary expanding at they talked, back and forth. Dirk's funny little impatient fidgets, wriggling, biting at his fingertips, Dave learned these and expanded on them. ASL was a language of body, and Dirk could certainly move.

They were missed, of course, and Dirk shut down once they took him back inside. Dave didn't like the switch.

John bounced in the front passenger seat on the drive home and asked Dave about Dirk. "What did you do?"

"We talked," Dave drawled.

"But...Dave...he doesn't talk."

"He talks. It's like Bro. Signing and shit." Dave stared out the window at the passing interstate. "He's my nephew."

"He's your _what_?" John spluttered.

"My nephew. I knew who his daddy was once you said. He was Bro's and mine's brother, an' Dirk's dad. So. Dirk's my nephew." Dave and his twin had been very late-life surprises for their mother, and had dropped into Bro's custody when she'd died. Bro'd done his best with the two of them, but he was really unlikely to get custody of anyone else....

"That's...weird. I wonder...." John started thinking. Dave shook his head, and planned what to tell Bro and his twin when he got home.

"Our nephew's older than us," Dave told his twin.

"Shit." Dave and Dove, they were, but Dave and Sprite to eachother, though Dave couldn't even remember why. Sprite didn't even like the drink. "Really?"

"Yeah. He's like Bro all over again. Where's Bro, anyways?" Dave slouched onto the couch beside Sprite. He reached up and ruffled his twin's hair. Sprite made protesting noises, batted at him uselessly, finally boffed him in the shins with the game controller. Dave yipped and flopped over Sprite's lap, mortally wounded by the Mighty Game Controller. Sprite mussed his hair in return, cheerfully.

"Boys." Bro leaned over the back of the couch and ruffled everyone's hair with gloved hands. "What's the fight? How'd the visit to John go?"

"Bro, I found our nephew," Dave reported. "Dirk. He's aphasic. They've got him up near where John and Jane live. We should get him."

Bro blinked several times behind his shades. "Found him?"

"Yeah. He looks just like you." Dave rolled on his back in Sprite's lap. "His name's Dirk. His eyes are orange, kinda." Which made Dirk and Sprite and Bro all of a matching set, hazel eyes bleached to a shade of orange through albinism. Dave, Rose, and Roxy fell on the blue-ish end, with Rose's eyes appearing lavender, Roxy's eyes something more like pink or mauve, and Dave's own eyes a startling red. Dave was the palest of them all. He didn't even have the ghost of freckles, like Bro and Sprite did. Dave always got second looks, outright stares, and never passed as anything other than pigment-challenged. 

"I don't think they'll let me have custody of him. I barely have custody of you two," Bro confessed, distressed. "And you know they'll try to take you away any chance they get."

The nebulous they. Dave and Sprite only nodded. Everyone, from the doctors to the therapists to _Rose_ , told them not to agree with Bro's paranoia. But on this account it was mostly true. The government just didn't think a paranoid schizophrenic who was symptomatic on some really stiff drugs should be taking care of two kids, especially one who was disabled and sickly. Sprite was doing pretty damn fine, though, in Dave's opinion, and he'd _know_ because Sprite was pretty much his other self.

"Take your pills, Bro?" he asked, though he knew Bro did. Ground out habit and duty, though really they didn't work like they should. But then, if they worked about this well when Bro was taking the higher-end doses of a really impressive cocktail of antipsychotics and anxiolytics and a few antidepressants too, Dave knew his older brother would be so damn nonfunctional he'd probably be catatonic _off_ them. As it was, Bro managed to hold two jobs from home, got Dave and Sprite to school, went to his doctor's appointments and took his meds and stayed functional, if reclusive and certain the world was out to get them all and take Dave and Sprite away from him.

"Yeah. Maybe we could petition anyway..." Bro mused, because he was dawn by the lure of _family_ just as Dave was. 

They needed to stick together, they who were the mutants, the misunderstood, the ones that didn't quite fit in. Sprite chose this moment to have a sudden spazz-tastic coughing fit when he tried to comment but inhaled the wrong way, and ended up needing his inhaler. Dave had mostly grown out of the asthma, but Sprite's whacked immune system hadn't kicked it. Dave cuddled his twin on the couch and Bro went to make supper. It wasn't girly to cuddle with Sprite, because they'd been doing it ever since they'd been sharing an umbilical cord in the womb. 

Dave fingercombed Sprite's hair and poked at his half-arm just to tickle it. Sprite called him foul names but never moved to get away, his head a heavy weight in the hollow of Dave's shoulder. Instead he asked, "Was he aphasic like Bro?"

"Well, kinda. He wanted to talk. But apparently his dad, Bro's twin, he took him to this island vacation spot or whatever then died, and nobody knew, so somewhere between then and now he's forgot how to talk. Or that's what they say. I think he can understand talking, though, just not if you go fast." Bro was well-off, but his twin had been a multi-millionaire director of actual movies. Complete with little Pacific island vacation homes and shit, apparently. Dave looked around the cluttered bachelor apartment and decided this was better anyway.

Sprite mused, "So he might be like Jade and Jake." Who had learned speech a little from their grandfather, then had mostly taught themselves after he'd died from the internet and books. They talked, but in a very strange singsong way, without normal human patterns of speech. Dave always thought they sounded like birds. Sprite poked Dave's knee, three and a half legs all tangled together on the couch.

"I dunno, he picked up ASL pretty fast, but he never opened his mouth. Might be true." Dave shrugged. "You wanna go visit, too?"

"Sure. Can my wheelchair fit?"

"Oh yeah, yeah, they got lots of room for it."

A week later, they all three visited. Even Bro, twitchy and jumpy and with Lil Cal, his favorite puppet and best confidant, draped over his shoulders as a security blanket. A man built like Bro shouldn't have been almost afraid of his own shadow, almost six foot and with shoulders like a linebacker, but there it was. He followed Dave and Sprite closely, Dave pushing Sprite's wheelchair and Sprite waving at everyone. It was impossible not to love Sprite's freckles and lopsided smile and cheer, because with only half an arm and one leg and a smile wide as the Mississippi, he was a damn good definition of 'plucky as hell.' Nurses and nurse-types always adored him. Sprite hammed it up like a pro, taking all the attention away from Dave and Bro - especially Bro who was hella nervy right now.

Dirk was hiding in the corner of the common room again, but when he saw Dave he made a beeline right for him, eyes too wide behind his sunglasses. This time they all went out and sat in the sunny courtyard. Dave introduced Sprite and Bro, and they started talking. Dirk had apparently forgotten a few signs since, but he picked them back up soon enough, and something in his face began to ease the longer he was around them.

It was Sprite's bright idea to hand him a computer.

Dirk actually broke into a _grin_ and pulled up a word document. He typed so fast Dave was impressed. They all leaned over his shoulders as Dirk introduced himself, asked half a dozen questions of them each, and pleaded with them to let him go home to his island. Or anywhere but the institute, please please please. That was really, really sad. They all took turns answering the questions, and Bro told him the island wasn't really an option anymore. But maybe a small high-rise apartment in Houston was.

Dave hoped so. Dirk needed someone who understood him, like Bro did, and who better than family?

Rose was of the opinion putting two paranoid non-verbal people in one apartment was asking for trouble. Unfortunately, the government seemed to lean on her way of thinking. But Dirk's case and recovery had gotten media attention, and Dave was very good at trolling the internets. He started campaigns, letters, and Sprite helped, and they worked the internet masses into a seething froth. With that much pressure and all the angry letters, the government gave way in the name of 'family'. 

Twelve months after Dave had met him, Dirk came to live in their small high-rise Houston apartment. They added more medication to the cabinets, new doctors and a different routine to several already juggling. Dirk prowled the place like a tiger in a small cage, wide-eyed and startling easy at every loud noise. Bro patiently taught him ASL and their own quirky shorthand. Whatever else was said about Bro, the man was a brilliant teacher. Dirk learned fast and hungry, soaking up the signs, forgetting half the next day and relearning them again. He retained more each time, but he would get frustrated with his lapses and go hide in corners and closets and in tight tight spaces. 

Dirk typed and coded like a whiz, and they got the story out of him straight. Apparently Dirk had been marooned on his little island for almost ten years, with spotty internet and electricity, a bunch of iguanas, and one very large cougar. The big cat, not the older woman; she'd been a pet and for some reason hadn't eaten Dirk alive...even if she'd eaten Dirk's dad. Dirk had watched movies and coded the laptops and hunted iguanas, and hadn't thought to call for help because he'd been barely six at the time. And then he'd just forgotten about it when the utilities cut out, left the house shut up, and survived. And forgot how to talk. He'd forgotten what words even sounded like at first, but he'd remembered pretty well. He still just...couldn't make them come out. 

Bro explained that hell, some days he couldn't talk either, so it was okay. Besides, typing worked well enough for them all, and sign language. Dirk learned and read and helped Dave and Sprite with their homework and followed them all around the house like a puppy. Sprite usually stayed pretty stationary once he got home, what with only having one leg and all and the apartment really being a bit small for his wheelchair, and Dirk spent a lot of time with him, just sitting together. Dirk wanted company after having been alone for so long and they were happy to give it. Dave wasn't jealous, because he knew who his twin loved best; it was him. When they all sat together, Sprite always leaned towards Dave, same as Dave always leaned towards Sprite; that was just them, and how they were.

(Sprite actually did have well-fitting, very good prostheses. He didn't wear them around the apartment because he didn't like them, and Bro was convinced they had implants from the government to spy on them. Sprite used a crutch and Dave, or Bro because it was no problem for Bro to carry him from point A to point B. Dave never carried him; they were the same size and all they did was fall down. So Sprite leaned on him and they walked together like some mutant three-legged creature.)

Dave got to recognize when Dirk called him, because Dirk would actually try to call him. He still couldn't make a sound, but he'd open his mouth and shape the name, and Dave got used to watching for the motion, like a baby bird begging. He didn't do it for Sprite or Bro, and Dave wondered if it was because he'd been the first to really get Dirk. Who knew? Who the hell knew?

All was not sunshine and roses, though, because this was the Strider household, and life with a paranoid schizophrenic who was also a black belt in three different types of martial arts was always rough. Not that Bro was unkind, but he was a thorough teacher and prankster to boot. Bro started teaching Dirk their own personal style of urban warrior life, and he picked it up slowly. Dave taught him to avoid the booby-traps and figure out how to keep life going when Bro was panicking and locked in his room because the world was out to kill him and was spying on him through robotic implants in Dave and Sprite. Dave also taught Dirk how to handle it when Bro was talking back to the walls and the puppets...because of _course_ the puppets talked to Bro, or so Bro said.

Dirk tagged along to midnight runs to the hospital when Sprite's asthma got bad or when he spiked fevers and had seizures or Dave got his migraines so bad he couldn't see and couldn't stop throwing up for the pain. The nurses in the ER learned his name too and were kind to him and got the signing translator in there for him like they did for Bro. At first he was too scared to do anything, even sit, would just stand there stiff as a board, but he got used to it and started talking back. Dave started teaching him how to drive, in Bro's ancient old station wagon that was a stickshift. Dave sometimes had to drive to the hospital, even though he was only thirteen. Dirk was a better choice, being sixteen and therefore able to be legal. 

When Dirk got his driver's license, Bro took everyone out for icecream and cake. 

About nine months after they'd had Dirk, way too soon in Dave's opinion, there came the annual meet-everyone-shindig that they'd started a very long time ago. So they went, with Dirk in tow, because he was family too. They packed them all in the car, and Dirk and Bro and Dave drove in shifts, and out to Florida they went. There, in a little no-name town with a beach of streaky black-and-white sand, they met up with the Lalondes, and the Egberts and the Harleys. John and Jane were cousins, but they were first cousins to eachother and second cousins to Jade and Jake, who were brother and sister and inseperable. Roxy and Rose were Dave's nieces.

Everyone there called Bro Bro, except for Mom Lalonde, who called him Devi and he called her Rani, because their mother'd had peculiar naming ideas. 

Sprite relented because the sand was too much for his wheelchair and put on his prosthesis and crutch and limped around lopsidedly. Like a crab. Dirk took to piggybacking him often because Dirk couldn't say no...but Bro rarely did either. Jake was also always ready to cart Sprite around. John wanted to but after the last incident, Sprite said no. No more crashes for him thanks. Dave agreed, and helped by fending off John whenever he got too close to Sprite. John was like an overenthusiastic strong puppy, and Sprite was a little too fragile to be played rough with. Not that Dave was much better, he was smaller than everyone his age, but he at least was steady on his feet in the sand.

Dirk was iffy about John and Jade and Jake. Way too much excitement. Jane and Rose he tolerated pretty well, but he was smitten with Roxy. Roxy liked him, treated him like she did her overfed and spoiled kittens. Rose, anoxeric thin again and unhealthily pale, tried to psychoanalyze him. Jane just tried to feed him cupcakes, like she did to everyone, and treated him with a vaguely-uneasy kindness. Roxy bounced about and led him gently by one finger and treated him kind and Dave felt he was safe in her careless-seeming clutches.

As bubbly as Roxy was, she could be very tender with things that needed it. Rose tended to be too acidic for anyone to stomach for long, even herself. 

Jade attached herself to Dave, who didn't mind. Island-brown with verdant eyes and raven hair straight as a stick, she singsonged her words at him and dipped in for cuddles before flying away, exuberant and shy all at once. Dave was more than fond of her. He was pretty sure he might love her, pretty and sweet and kind-hearted as summer. She liked him best, and loved Sprite too, and Sprite thought she was nice but didn't mind that she liked Dave better. It would be really hard to find anyone else that didn't mind Sprite but that Sprite didn't mind too...

Jake roughhoused with John and the two of them carried enough energy for the world and back again. Dave chased Jade and she chased him until he had to sit down in the sand beside Sprite and Dirk and cough and cough. Sprite offered to share his inhaler and Dirk rubbed his back and Dave felt pretty okay with the world. He'd been worried that Dirk would freak the fuck out over all these people, but he seemed pretty chill with it. He wasn't talking to anyone but Roxy and the Striders, but neither was Bro.

Bro talked to his sister some and stayed silent around the other adults, Paul who was John's dad and Nanna his grandmother who everyone and everyone called Nanna, even Paul.

They stayed five days and played in the sand and the water and talked and piled up in hotel rooms to watch TV like sleepovers and ate junk food and were generally a badly-behaved bunch of teenagers on the loose. The little town had a laundromat and general store and a Goodwill and that was about it, and Dave knew it like the back of his hand because they'd met here for forever. He showed Dirk around and Dirk followed like a puppy and silently peeped Dave's name at him. They tried on hats in the Goodwill and Dirk bought an orange cap to stand out against Bro's battered old navy one. 

They went back and Sprite laughed at them and Bro smiled.

Dave decided life was pretty good.


End file.
